Old Friend Not Hospitable to Geneva College

Canton, OH - Geneva College′s men′s basketball team was looking to an old friend to help them out of their recent losing slide. However, that old friend, Malone University, was also in need of a victory on Thursday night. The Golden Tornadoes dropped a 93-69 decision to their old American Mideast Conference foe and lost for the fourth straight time in dropping to 2-9 on the season. Malone entered the game with a three-game losing streak and improved to 4-12 on the season.

"We felt like we could get something done coming into the game," said Geneva College head coach Jeff Santarsiero. "They jumped on us early and we were never in the game. We are looking for some leadership right now and we are not a very good basketball team at this point. We don′t have much time to stay down because we have tough stretch of games coming up."

Malone did jump out quickly with the first seven points of the game. The Pioneers ended the first half with a 52-31 lead. They led by as many as 34 points in the second half before settling for the 24 point decision. Malone was averaging just 61 points a game before posting 93 against Geneva. Malone got scoring contributions from 12 players including a team high 13 point from Jarrod Ferwerda.

The lone bright spot for Geneva′s offense came from Brandon Harvey′s 18 points. Harvey sank five three point field goals. Geneva shot the ball at a 43% clip, but the defense allowed Malone to shoot 53%, including a 20-33 (61%) effort in the first half. Dave Phillips was the only other Geneva player to reach double figures with 11 points, including three treys.

Geneva will look to put an end to its four-game losing slide on Saturday night when it returns home to host Waynesburg University at 7:30 pm.